What's it Like to Be Imprisoned for 20 Years Since the Age of 14 and Suddenly Get Out?

When Anthony Williams' murder conviction was thrown out last month, he had a chance to be released from prison -- something he never had since he was sentenced to life without parole 20 years ago at the age of fourteen. All he had to do was plead guilty to a crime he says he didn't commit.

After Cole County Judge Daniel Green threw out Williams' 1994 murder conviction on grounds that the prosecution withheld evidence, the St. Louis Circuit Attorney's Office gave an ultimatum: Drop your claim for innocence, accept a reduced charge of second-degree murder, receive time served, and get out of prison -- or roll the dice and take the case to court again.

"My first instinct was 'no.' I didn't do this and I'm gonna fight and just continue to hold out and see what happens," Williams tells Daily RFT. He had two weeks to take the Circuit Attorney's deal or risk going to court and possibly losing his chance at freedom.

The 34-year-old says the two weeks were filled with sleepless nights and endless self-doubt. If he had to go to court again, the process could have drawn on for months, maybe longer.

"They were talking this four or five or six more month stuff and I could barely make it through the 15 days of anxiety and uncertainty. So another four, five, six months? I know I couldn't have made it mentally," Williams says.

For the 20 years he had been imprisoned, he never had a real "out date" to look forward to as the day he would be released, a fact he was reminded of every time he looked at his Department of Corrections paperwork.

"My out date always read '9-9-9-9-9,'" Williams says.

Not wanting to risk keeping that impossible date over a chance to get out in a few days, he called up his attorney, Jennifer Bukowsky, and said he wanted to take the deal.

"I wouldn't be able to live with myself knowing that I had the opportunity now to regain my freedom and somehow lost that down the road by trying to go through this process of having to win again,"he explains. "It was unbearable for me. So I elected to come on home."

Besides, the man who has always maintained his innocence didn't have a whole lot of faith in the court system.

"That's something I learned very early on when I got convicted. Just because you're innocent, it doesn't really mean anything," he says. "One court can see something one way, another court can see it another way."

So Williams took the deal and was released from prison. But he is still the convicted murderer of Cortez Andrews, something Circuit Attorney Jennifer Joyce pointed out in a statement after the deal was announced.

"We believe there is sufficient evidence that Mr. Williams is guilty beyond a reasonable doubt," Joyce writes. "The State's witnesses remain available. We have been provided no new exonerating evidence. We believe Mr. Williams is guilty."

The prosecutor who put tried Williams twenty years ago also denies Williams' innocence. In fact, she tells us in an email statement that if the case went to court, she'd help prosecute him herself.

"The circuit attorney's office had all of the witnesses lined up and ready to go; the victim's mother and twin brother still want life imprisonment for Anthony Williams. And, I would have come back to the circuit attorney's office to personally try this case again," Whitehead says. "The only mention of Anthony Williams' innocence comes from Anthony and his lawyer."

But Bukowsky says that despite the acceptance of the lesser charge of second-degree murder, there was never an admission of guilt on the record.

"[The circuit attorney] reduced the charge to murder second and credited Williams with time served under Miller. That didn't require him pleading to anything," she says. "He didn't have to plead to a crime that he did not commit. We just had to draw up a habeus petition as part of the deal so we could no longer litigate about his innocence."

Despite the debate surrounding the meaning of his conviction, Williams is now a free man trying to adjust to the outside. But his adjustment process is different than most former prisoners because of his age when he was locked up.

Shortly after being arrested and held for the murder, Williams was placed in a juvenile dormitory of an adult prison that was separate from the adult living quarters. But other parts of prison life required mixing with adult prisoners.

For more on Williams' life in prison as child, click on the next page...